A Course in Miracles

by Helen Schucman

When spirit’s original state of direct communication is reached, neither the body nor the miracle serves any purpose.

If it elects to do so, the mind can become the medium by which spirit creates along the line of its own creation.

The miracle is a sign that the mind has chosen to be led by me in Christ’s service.

VI. The Illusion of Needs

You who want peace can find it only by complete forgiveness.

sense of separation from God is the only lack you really need correct. This sense of separation would never have arisen if you had not distorted your perception of truth, and had thus perceived yourself as lacking. The idea of order of needs arose because, having made this fundamental error, you had already fragmented yourself into levels with different needs. As you integrate you become one, and your needs become one accordingly. Unified needs lead to unified action, because this produces a lack of conflict.

T-1.VI.3. The idea of orders of need, which follows from the original error that one can be separated from God, requires correction at its own level before the error of perceiving levels at all can be corrected. You cannot behave effectively while you function on different levels. However, while you do, correction must be introduced vertically from the bottom up. This is because you think you live in space, where concepts such as “up” and “down” are meaningful. Ultimately, space is as meaningless as time. Both are merely beliefs.

1.VI.4. The real purpose of this world is to use it to correct your unbelief. You can never control the effects of fear yourself, because you made fear, and you believe in what you made. In attitude, then, though not in content, you resemble your Creator, W...

produces the acceptance of existence. That is why you can believe what no one else thinks is true. It is true for...

Perfect love casts out fear. If fear exists, Then there is not perfect love. But: Only perfect love exists. If there is fear, It produces a state that does not exist.

Do not deceive yourself into believing that you can relate in peace to God or to your brothers with anything external.

Child of God, you were created to create the good, the beautiful and the holy. Do not forget this. The Love of God, for a little while, must still be expressed through one body to another, because vision is still so dim. You can use your body best to help you enlarge your perception so you can achieve real vision, of which the physical eye is incapable. Learning to do this is the body’s only true usefulness.

T-1.VII.4. This is a course in mind training. All learning involves attention and study at some level. Some of the later parts of the course rest too heavily on these earlier sections not to require their careful study. You will also need them for preparation. Without this, you may become much too fearful of what is to come to make constructive use of it. However, as you study these earlier sections, you will begin to see some of the implications that will be amplified later on.

you should not experience awe in the presence of your equals. However, it was also emphasized that awe is proper in the Presence of your Creator.

Revelation may occasionally reveal the end to you, but to reach it the means are needed.

Because of your likeness to your Creator you are creative. No child of God can lose this ability because it is inherent in what he is, but he can use it inappropriately by projecting.

The Garden of Eden, or the pre-separation condition, was a state of mind in which nothing was needed.

What is seen in dreams seems to be very real. Yet the Bible says that a deep sleep fell upon Adam, and nowhere is there reference to his waking up.

The world has not yet experienced any comprehensive reawakening or rebirth. Such a rebirth is impossible as long as you continue

to project or miscreate. It still remains within you, however, to extend as God extended His Spirit to you. In reality this is your only choice, because your free will was ...

Spirit need not be taught, but the ego must be.

Learning is ultimately perceived as frightening because it leads to the relinquishment, not the destruction, of the ego to the light of spirit.

The dreamer who doubts the reality of his dream while he is still dreaming is not really healing his split mind.

You dream of a separated ego and believe in a world that rests upon it. This is very real to you. You cannot undo it by not changing your mind about it.

If you are willing to renounce the role of guardian of your thought system and open it to me, I will correct it very...

But remember that laws are set up to protect the continuity of the system in which the lawmaker believes. It is natural for the ego to try to protect itself once you have made it, but it is not natural for you to want to obey its laws unless you believe them.

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The only sane solution is not to try to change reality, which is indeed a fearful attempt, but to accept it as it is.

The ego cannot oppose the laws of God any more than you can, but it can interpret them according to what it wants, just as you can. That is why the question, “What do you want?” must be answered.

The Holy Spirit, like the ego, is a decision.

The Holy Spirit and the ego are the only choices open to you.

Delusional ideas are not real thoughts, although you can believe in them.

The message of the crucifixion is perfectly clear:

Teach only love, for that is what you are.

II. The Alternative to Projection

T-6.II.2. What you project you disown, and therefore do not believe is yours. You are excluding yourself by the very judgment that you are different from the one on whom you project. Since you have also judged against what you project, you continue to attack it because you continue to keep it separated. By doing this unconsciously, you try to keep the fact that you attacked yourself out of awareness, and thus imagine that you have made yourself safe.

The ego justifies this on the grounds that it makes you seem “better” than they are, thus obscuring your equality with them still further.

The process begins by excluding something that exists in you but which you do not want, and leads directly to excluding you from your brothers.

We have learned, however, that there is an alternative to projection. Every ability of the ego has a better use, because its abilities are directed by the mind, which has a better Voice. The Holy Spirit extends and the ego projects. As their goals are opposed, so is the result.

The Holy Spirit begins by perceiving you as perfect. Knowing this perfection is shared He recognizes it in others, thus strengthening it in both. Instead of anger this arouses love for both, because it establishes inclusion. Perceiving equality, the Holy Spirit perceives equal needs. This invites Atonement automatically, because Atonement is the one need in this world that is universal. To perceive yourself this way is the only way in which you can find happiness in the world. That is because it is the acknowledgment that you are not in this world, for the world is unhappy.

How else can you find joy in a joyless place except by realizing that you are not there?

By enabling you to use perception in a way that reflects knowledge, you will ultimately remember it.

mind. You perceive from your mind and project your perceptions outward.

Key

The full awareness of the Atonement, then, is the recognition that the separation never occurred. The ego cannot prevail against this because it is an explicit statement that the ego never occurred.

The ego can accept the idea that return is necessary because it can so easily make the idea seem difficult.

Yet the Holy Spirit tells you that even return is unnecessary, because what never happened cannot be difficult.

However, you can make the idea of return both necessary ...

The difference between the ego’s projection and the Holy Spirit’s extension is very simple. The ego projects to exclude, and therefore to deceive. The Holy Spirit extends by recognizing Himself in every mind, and thus perceives them as one.

Your Godlike mind can never be defiled. The ego never was and never will be part of it, but through the ego you can hear and teach and learn what is not true.

The ego does not regard itself as part of you.